Mr. Arthur D. Bodden’s eponymously-named North Church Street convenience store is a working heritage site – an unlikely bastion of island values. Entering is an evocative step back in time, where ‘the old ways’ endure, and Caymankind infuses every aspect of life. Here stands one family’s enduring legacy and its commitment to celebrate, in perpetuity, the ‘islands that time forgot’.

Established in 1897, the humble white, shiplap structure is a rare historical gem in Grand Cayman’s crown, soon to be recognised by the National Trust for the Cayman Islands with a commemorative plaque as a ‘Building of Historic Significance.’ Today, cruise ships tower on the horizon where once visiting turtling schooners anchored, but at Mr. Arthur’s, just a short stroll from the harbour, it’s business as usual.

Following its grand re-opening in December 2022, Mr. Arthur’s granddaughter, Alexandra Bodden and husband, Mitchel, have emerged as the next generation blazing the shop’s trail, eager to promote a more modernised business brand for new 21st-century customers. Having sunk eight inches with the rigours of time, the building has been restored to its former glory, and a new shady seaside deck now overlooks the stunning bay framed by ironshore and languishing palms. Come dusk, there can be no better place to watch the sunset as the skies blaze fiery gold and orange. This is indeed paradise immemorial.

Inside, Alexandra excitedly points out updated features: the iPad Point of Sale, new shiny coolers, the line of ‘Made in Cayman’ products – soaps and sea salt to honey and hot sauce – even a telephone line, of which ‘Papa’ would be proud.

But it’s the legend herself, Miss Velonie, keeper of the memories, whom many come to see now. Unassumingly, she busies herself wrapping the bun and cheese – a customer favourite – the job she has done for the past 43 years. What Miss Velonie doesn’t know is not worth knowing.

Still boasting ‘the coldest Pepsis and hottest patties’ on island, Mr. Arthur’s was originally known simply as the 7-11, but was later renamed after the man who would become as much a landmark as the structure itself. Built and operated by Mr. Waid Stead Bodden, a carpenter whose black and white photograph hangs over the counter, the store served George Town residents with all the essentials: kerosene for engines and lamps, fresh produce, drinks and candies for the children – even homemade peppermint candy at Christmas, and provisions for the whole family,
all served with characteristic warmth and love.

Alongside his wife, Betsy, Mr. Waid and the couple’s five boys lived over the road in the five-roomed whitewashed cottage built of termite-resistant pinewood and raised on ironwood posts. Enclosed by a storybook picket fence once brimming with colourful crotons and blooming rosebushes, its zinc roof and fretwork remain, to this day, pretty as a picture. Breezy porch swings rocked babies to sleep, offering shady views of the shop and the stunning turquoise bay where generations of island children learned to swim, fish and launch their skiffs. Look closely, and you will find Mr. Waid’s initials carved into the front steps leading to a gate fashioned after the Union Jack. It would be the charismatic Arthur, however, the youngest son, born in 1905, who would take on the store when his father passed away and make his own indelible mark in Cayman’s history.

Reared on affection and the Bible, Arthur (nicknamed ‘Tattie’) roamed freely as a child, but with Aunt Becky to the north, Uncle Knowles to the south and ‘Gramma’ just up the way, the most mischief he got up to was stealing sugar from the store with his brother, Teddy. Days began and ended with family scripture, and Sundays were spent at the local Presbyterian church. Learning to read this way, Arthur was rarely without a book in hand. Captured in a charming oral history held at the Cayman Islands National Archive, he recounts how, some mornings, he would rise before dawn and, with a lantern hung from his wheelbarrow, accompany his father “along the Bay” (Seven Mile Beach) to collect firewood for the caboose, returning as the sun rose over the homestead, for a breakfast of yellow-heart breadfruit and fish washed down by homegrown fever grass tea. Other mornings, his nightshirt trailing the ground, he would run over to his Gramma’s house, enquiring, “Gramma! Are you still alive?” Upon receiving proof of life, he turned his attention to collecting the spoils from the ‘pear’ tree before heading home to do chores: tending the fowl coop and hog pen or harvesting tomatoes, cabbages, peppers and guava from the back garden. And, although he had to stand on a box to see over the counter, like many future generations of Boddens, he began helping his father at the store that would become his namesake, learning to count, use mental arithmetic, weigh, make change and charm his customers.

Whilst his eldest brother was expected to become a school teacher and the next three to go to sea, Mr. Waid hoped Arthur would stay home and manage the store. However, a chance encounter with a visiting US Navy survey ship, Hannibal, would give the young boy bigger ideas. One day, joining other boys rowing limes and oranges out to the visiting seamen, he overheard a heavy-weight boxing match relayed over the radio. Enthralled, he raced home, announcing, “Papa… when I grow up, I’m going to be a wireless operator!” So, at just 16, he headed to sea on the schooner, Explicit, to chase his dreams.

Fourteen years on, having trained with the Radio Marine Corporation of America (RMCA), which placed personnel with equipment on board ships as wireless operators, Arthur Bodden had obtained the top qualification in wireless communication. Furthermore, in another serendipitous twist of fate, whilst awaiting a ship in New Orleans, a three-month stint working at the print shop of the New Orleans Times-Picayune Newspaper would lead him back home where he married Sunday school teacher Edith Alexandra Crighton, with whom he had five children - Arthurlyn, Patricia, Joy and Jacqueline, and only son, Truman - and where, with his father’s same entrepreneurial spirit, he established the Arthur D. Bodden Print Shop. Located opposite the store where he worked alongside his father for the next 13 years before his passing, it was a stone’s throw from the only home he would ever know.

Starting in 1936, with a manual 6 x 9 Kelsey press, he soon printed close to everything on island, from commercial items to all government stationery, upgrading to an automated Chandler 10 x 15 press in the 1950s to keep up with demand. Simultaneously and somewhat prophetically, he not only became Cayman’s first wireless operator, sending his first transmission that same year, but also its first weatherman, in charge of the weather station set up by the Cuban government on Cayman’s shores. And oh… the stories he could tell.

There was the time a freak hurricane set the ill-fated turtle schooner, Goldfield, adrift or, as Alan Ebanks wrote in a 1988 Newstar article, the storm of 1942 when the station was on air for 72 consecutive hours. Bodden tells how he was supplied with delicious hot meals by Mrs. Belle Grainger and Scotch – “whisky, not tape” – by Commissioner Cardinall to warm his insides.

Upon receiving the all-clear, he stepped outside in the rain and dark, with winds still gusting at 45 mph. He recalled, jovially, “I had my pipe facing the ground. It’s possible to smoke it that way because of the rain, but I ran into
the Custom House’s boat. That pushed the stem of the pipe down my throat, and I’ll guarantee you it didn’t taste nearly as good as the food… or the Scotch!”

Memories are good. Amid the transience and ‘noise’ of modern Cayman, it’s comforting to imagine that five generations of Boddens have called this place home – meeting for family lunches around the same circular table and watching annual Pirate’s Week fireworks over the bay with candies and drinks bought from the store. Miss Velonie laughingly recounts how, if Mr. Arthur needed to remember something, he would tie a knot in his handkerchief and throw it on the floor. But, Arthur Bodden, the man who, at 85 years of age, Ebanks described as “having more fire and energy in [his] small body than some men half his age,” is truly unforgettable.

Working the tragic day of his passing, in October 1991, with his distinctive captain’s hat worn at a jaunty angle, his curved pipe and thick glasses, and his white pants and long-sleeved white shirt rolled above the elbow, he is remembered for his kindness, humour and pioneering spirit and immortalised in the portraits and photographs that dot the store. Those who knew and loved him tell stories of Papa – always with a tell-tale smile creeping across their features.

The same can be said of Ms. Arthurlyn, Papa’s namesake, who stepped in behind the counter to fill her father’s shoes. Having, like other Bodden youngsters, worked in the store from childhood, she ran operations until the 2020 pandemic and her subsequent passing the following year. Remembering her easy smile and warmth, many loyal customers viewed her as a grandmother figure – albeit one who drove a black ‘race car’. Her delicate pencil-drawn portrait, too, hangs proudly alongside that of her father and grandfather.

Storms come and go, but Mr. Arthur’s is a constant, ever-fixed mark in the evolution of Cayman commerce. But… it is, arguably, so much more. Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard asserts that, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” and the Bodden family seems to understand this truth profoundly. So… if you ever find yourself in need of a place where the sun sets more slowly and the breeze blows cooler, the doors are always open at Mr. Arthur’s.

Why not call? Miss Velonie, the keeper of memories, will be there.